5.  The first applicant was born in 1969 and lives in Budapest. The second applicant, Irodalom Kft, is a Hungarian limited liability company, with its seat in Budapest.
6.  Mr Ungváry is a well-reputed historian specialised in 20th century Hungarian history including State security under the Communist regime.
Irodalom Kft is the publisher of the literary and political weekly Élet és Irodalom.
7.  On 18 May 2007 Élet és Irodalom published a study (entitled The Genesis of a Procedure – Dialógus in Pécs) written by Mr Ungváry. The article dealt with the actions of the security service against a spontaneous student peace movement (“Dialógus”) active in Pécs and elsewhere in the country in the 1980s. The author stated inter alia that:
“... the Dialógus-affair had demonstrated ... how closely the Ministry of the Interior and the ‘social organisations’ – which had taken over some State-security functions covertly, in case of necessity – had been intertwined”.
8.  The lead of the article pointed out that the recent scandals exposing former agents acting for the party-State’s security system covered up the fact that most reporting for that system had been done through accidental, social or official contacts (as had been the case with a Mr K., a judge of the Constitutional Court at the material time, elected by Parliament), rather than by actual agents.
The lead contained the following passage:
“From the perspective of informing (besúgás) and repression (megtorlás), Officer J. W. ... and the nine “official contacts” (hivatalos kapcsolat) proved to be a lot more important ... [in the Dialógus-affair], [these official contacts including] Mr K. (today judge of the Constitutional Court)... Their respective responsibilities are of course different.”
The author argued that Mr K., without being an actual agent,
“... was in regular and apparently collegial (kollégiális) contact with the State security, quite often anticipating and exceeding its expectations” ... “and as an official contact, he was busy as an informant (besúgó) and demanding hard-line policies”.
The writing made reference to the role of further contemporary public figures, amongst others the Prime Minister, a member of the European Economic and Social Committee, a former Member of Parliament and a university professor.
9.  In the article, Mr Ungváry relied, inter alia, on documents available in the Historical Archives of the State Security Service archived as a “strictly confidential action plan”. Referring to the above material, he described the role played by leaders of Pécs University – including Mr K., deputy secretary of the local party committee between 1983 and 1988 – in assisting the security operations.
Mr Ungváry characterised Mr K.’s attitude in the Dialógus case as that of a “hardliner”, in comparison to other “social contacts”. He recalled that Mr K. had ordered the removal of Dialógus’s poster, saying that “the country did not need such an ... organisation [i.e. Dialógus]”, and that he had reproached a candidate in the Communist youth organisation’s elections for having been supported by Dialógus.
10.  In its next issue of 25 May 2007 Élet és Irodalom published Mr K.’s statement written in response to the disputed article, denying the allegations.
11.  On 27 May 2007 a television channel broadcast an interview with Mr Ungváry about the article published in Élet és Irodalom. He reiterated his argument that in the previous political system most reporting had been done through accidental, social or official contacts. He argued that providing information, writing reports or removing posters would have qualified as agent activities, and Mr K. had been responsible for at least one of them. He called the latter ‘trash’.
Mr K. initiated proceedings with a view to obtaining a rectification in the press, refuting the applicants’ allegations. His claim was sustained by the courts and the second applicant published a rectification on 22 February 2008.
12.  In April 2008 a reference book co-authored by Mr Ungváry was published outlining the history of the Communist State security and including a chapter with the full version of the article published in Élet és Irodalom.
13.  On 30 April 2008 an interview with Mr Ungváry appeared on an internet news portal concerning the release of the book, where he called Mr K. “a party secretary writing mood reports”.
14.  Mr K. filed a criminal complaint against Mr Ungváry on charges of libel. In the course of the ensuing proceedings the latter apologised for having called him ‘trash’ in the television interview.
The second-instance criminal court was of the view that the statements in question constituted opinions. Mr Ungváry was acquitted on 25 February 2010.
15.  Meanwhile, Mr K. filed a defamation action against both applicants.
On 9 February 2009 the Budapest Regional Court found that Mr Ungváry had infringed Mr K.’s personality rights through his statements made in the study published in Élet és Irodalom, the television interview and the book. The second applicant was found to have violated Mr K.’s personality rights through publishing the study. The court relied on section 84(1) of the Civil Code.
16.  Relying in essence on the findings of fact established in the rectification proceedings (see paragraph 11 above), the court established that Mr Ungváry and the publisher had disseminated false and unproven statements tarnishing the reputation of Mr K. by maintaining that the latter had acted as a quasi-agent during the Communist regime, been an informant of and collaborated with the State security, reported to them and carried out their orders, and been a “hardliner” in 1983.
The court further found that Mr Ungváry had falsely interpreted Mr K.’s political criticism towards a candidate in the Communist youth organisation’s elections as an action motivated by the State security.
17.  The court ordered Irodalom Kft to pay 1,000,000 Hungarian forints (HUF) (approximately 3,500 euros (EUR)) in respect of the article published in Élet és Irodalom. Mr Ungváry was ordered to pay HUF 2,000,000 (EUR 7,000) in damages.
18.  On appeal, on 13 October 2009 the Budapest Court of Appeal reversed this judgment and dismissed Mr K.’s action, holding that the impugned statements were value-judgments with sufficient factual background. However, it found that Mr Ungváry had violated Mr K.’s right to honour by calling him ‘trash’. This part of the judgment became final.
19.  On Mr K.’s petition for review, on 2 June 2010 the Supreme Court reversed the second-instance decision as to the remainder of the case. It found for Mr K., ruling that his personality rights had been violated by the false impression, given by the article in question, that he had been a quasi-agent and an informant during Communist times, collaborated as an ‘official contact’ with the State security and written reports for them, countered the youth organisation official’s election on the secret service’s instigation and demanded hard-line policies in 1983.
The court held that the article had not presented fact-driven conclusions of a historical research but mere defamatory and unsubstantiated statements about Mr K. It further affirmed that the applicants had been required to prove the truth of these allegations but had provided no such factual background.
The Supreme Court observed that there was no evidence that Mr K.’s report within the party hierarchy on the Dialógus-affair had been written on the commission, instruction or expectation of the Ministry of the Interior.
The judgment contained in particular the following passages:
“The concept of the author of the impugned article is in essence that, during [the Communist] regime, the so-called ‘official contacts’ also played an important role in the State security’s activities, in addition to the [actual] agents. It is probably true that the Ministry of the Interior indeed considered certain [officials] as ‘official contacts’. It can also be assumed that some of them occasionally cooperated with the State security as ‘official contacts’, that is, carried out State-security tasks, surveyed, reported – in other words, were active in the manner described by the author as ‘unambiguously incarnating the activities of an agent’. However, it is not possible to deduce from this potentiality the general conclusion that every single [official] acted as an ‘official contact’; consequently, in the absence of proven facts, it is not acceptable to qualify all potentially available personalities [i.e. Communist party secretaries] as ‘official contacts’ actually cooperating with the State security. Public opinion condemns those persons who cooperated with the State security, even if they do not fall within the actual category of ‘agent’ or ‘informant’. Therefore, if someone is characterised, without a proper ground, as actually having carried out such activities, this violates that person’s reputation, according to public opinion. ...
However, [Mr Ungváry] has committed breaches of law also in addition [to the authoring of the article], which themselves have justified – although all the breaches have originated in the article published in Élet és Irodalom – the plaintiff’s claim for non-pecuniary damage. In respect of the statements made in [the television broadcast] and the book, the Supreme Court establishes the further, reasonable non-pecuniary damage due to the plaintiff in the amount of 1,000,000 Hungarian forints.”
20.  The Supreme Court ordered the applicants, jointly and severally, to pay damages in the amount of 2,000,000 Hungarian forints (HUF) (approximately 7,000 euros (EUR)) and accrued interest, whereas Mr Ungváry had to pay another HUF 1,000,000 (EUR 3,500) and accrued interest (see paragraph 19 above). The legal costs to be borne by the applicants amounted to approximately EUR 3,300, not including the applicants’ own legal expenses. The plaintiff’s claim as to an obligation on the side of the respondents to publish a compensatory statement was rejected as having been inadequately formulated.